The Berlin Episode of "Parts Unknown" Is A Bourdainian Masterpiece Years in the Making
"You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."
“Like an Irish playwright said: ‘You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’”
“Berlin” is episode five of season eleven of Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain and crew’s fourth TV show. There is only one season — really, a half season — after it. At the time of writing, I still haven’t seen that season. I couldn’t watch it when it aired; I’ve almost worked up, ironically, the stomach to watch it now. This piece is part of the puzzle, celebrating what I think is probably the culmination of a half-lifetime of creative, culinary, and educational endeavor. “Berlin” is a quiet opus, the work of masters of a specific craft executing at the highest level as though it’s just another day at the office — or just another episode of TV. It is, ultimately, that. But it is also an exemplar of what Bourdain and his creative fellows set out, so many years ago, to accomplish.
Anthony Bourdain is the closest thing I have to an idol, though to ever call him an idol, I think, misreads his legacy. What I liked about him was not just his voice, either written or spoken; his incisive perspective; or the culinary-inflected windows he and his team opened the world. I liked that I always felt like I had an idea of how fucked up he was, that he never fully presented himself as a Flawless TV Personality. He was plain about his shortcomings and regrets, going back to his popular debut in Kitchen Confidential, to his essays (compiled in The Nasty Bits and Medium Raw), to his shows, which per the demands of network TV softened his edges, but never could entirely remove them. I loved that he was constantly in dialogue with himself, both with his past — he often referenced his “over-testosteroned” younger persona from Kitchen Confidential, his ignorance of both Hollywood and the world during the filming of A Cook’s Tour, and his own reshaped opinions of people and places, e.g. Mario Batali — and his present, glimpsed in the more tense moments of No Reservations and The Layover, in crises about “stunt octopus” in Italy and a charitable moment in Haiti turned desperate. He frequently and only semi-tongue-in-cheekly discussed his ongoing struggle with depression. I loved that he noticed and uplifted everyday perspectives as much as, if not more than those of his more well-known friends (best represented in his essay, “My Aim Is True,” from Medium Raw, about a day in the life of Justo Thomas, fish-butcher of the three-starred seafood palace, Le Bernardin). I loved that he celebrated greatness from humble origins and unexpected corners, his lifelong championing of every kind of street food. I also loved that he was no saint, that he strove to make better what he fucked up, and that he publicly failed at that sometimes, too. I loved him all — all that I could through page and screen, at least — and mourned him all. I’ve never felt this way about another creative person or work. I still recognize the dangerous consumption of this kind of inspiration.
Anton: "I love it here because people stay out of my hair, and you can be invisible."
*Tony looks up*
Tony: "Yeah, that must be nice."
Over the last couple years, in fits and starts, I’ve undertaken to watch all of Bourdain’s shows in chronological order, from A Cook’s Tour to Parts Unknown. I recommend it, even for the less familiar; as long as you enjoy food and travel, all of them (with the possible exception of The Layover) are among the most genuine and insightful food and travel shows on TV; though that’s not an exceptionally high bar. Flawed, sanded down, and curated though these documents may be, it’s still fascinating, and often touching, to watch this old hand from the back of house grow in perspective and creative craft throughout the years and the episodes. It’s clearly not only the hair, shifting from black flecked with grey to a distinct silver (a trajectory interrupted by a couple hilarious on-air haircuts), that changes; it’s him, becoming bolder and more assured about his priorities in storytelling — more interested in whole truths and unflinching portraits than pornographicly airbrushed portrayals, leaning ever more into focused stories about specific experiences and themes unique to a location that reveal an uncommon perspective, almost always something you’ve neither seen nor heard before — and his crew’s increasing freedom of direction and technical imagination, that made these shows better and better.
With that context I say: Parts Unknown, “Berlin,” is Bourdain and co’s masterwork. It is a knockout in style and substance. In a phrase that belongs on a poster: it is a powerful, tantalizing, and surprising piece of television.
In it, the city of Berlin’s past and present are viewed through the lens of its artists — those who see themselves contributing to and rebuilding a culture obliterated by the final days of WWII, and subsequent decades of Cold War identity crisis. The composition of the episode itself reflects, and is enhanced by, this choice to focus through Berlin’s liberal, artful side, and is artful itself, taking liberties in all aspects of style. The sound design is impeccable, chapter to chapter, moving from a Reznor/Ross-like deep electronic thrum to guitar shreds befitting subject Anton Newcombe (of Brian Jonestown Massacre) to a modern riff on an Alexanderplatz organ grinder’s folksy tune.
Visuals are breathtaking, seamlessly transitioning from flurried montages to intimate subject close-ups to sudden breaths of beautiful everyday moments. Trains passing in the night, a lone pedestrian on a gloomy morning, a pair of clubbers silhouetted mid-kiss against strobing lights. Not only does this technical creativity make for engaging TV, it amplifies the perspective of Berlin we’re meant to understand, the city beyond the war-torn capitol of an industrious European heavyweight, influenced by its past, but not consumed by it. In fact, Berlin is portrayed to be one of the more forward-looking, liberal cities in the world.
Providing the voice, or voices, of Berlin are the interviews, typical of Bourdain’s shows, all of which are phenomenal. They include the German equivalent of Sam Elliott’s fists-meet-philosophy mentor character in Road House, a 20-year “legendary” bouncer and bar owner who speaks cerebrally on the city’s prodigious club scene; a pair of modern cabaret/burlesque performers recollecting the all-too-brief libertine Weimar Era between World Wars 1 & 2, a time of “open tolerance of excess in all things;” and notably featuring Anton Newcombe, frontman for The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a Southern Californian (complete with residual surfer drawl) and present-day example of yet another artist who chose Berlin, of all places, as the city to call home. From them we’re exposed to a more creative Berlin than we might otherwise imagine, shedding light on their individual areas of expertise, but also agreeing individually on the city’s strengths as an artist haven: its liberal acceptance, its affordability, and the significant feeling of helping to shape the city’s modern legacy.
Tony: “Why do you think here of all places would be so welcoming and attractive to creative people?”
Ellen: “After the war everything was burned here. There was nothing…Everything was gone. All the history. When you come here you have that feeling that you have to help, to build something here…If I go to Paris I’m not thinking I’m a part of Paris. Because there’s so much history you can see in Rome, I think only about the Roman history…But here, you have the feeling that you’re building something and I think that’s why so many people come here. When I’m here, I start being so creative because it means something to me…it’s a very quiet city but also there is something pulling, you know. Something that you have the feeling that you want to be a part of…”
Tony: “There’s no past, there’s only a future, in a sense. You can create your own world here.”
Ellen: “Yeah. Exactly, yeah.”
You may notice, perhaps chafing against the broad understanding of Anthony Bourdain and his media, that I haven’t really mentioned food. It’s there. There is impeccable, delicious-looking photography of several meals — including some truly drool-worthy slow-motion captures of sausages being basted, hello — but it isn’t a core focus of the episode. It’s simply a part of it, as food is part of the experience of Berlin but not necessarily its most important story; as food is part of our everyday lives, but our lives rarely, if ever, revolve around food. It’s a demonstration of the growth in storytelling I mentioned earlier: Bourdain and co have done German food before, so that’s not the story they want to share about Berlin. Art is the story they want to share about Berlin. But where better to come together to share those stories than over a good meal?
If you’ve watched enough of Bourdain and ZPZ’s body of work, much of the above is essentially the standard framework of many other episodes, going back all the way to A Cook’s Tour. Some food, some local color, some pretty camerawork and bespoke soundtrack and omniscient voiceover all packaged into 40-ish minutes. But the magic in “Berlin,” again, is seeing it all expertly come together into something so eminently watchable, yet informative, yet also fundamentally true to the subject. It leaves you, like the best travel media, with the feeling of (to paraphrase a certain Ms. Lemon) “wanting to go to there,” without the “there” being some fantasy version of there. You, I, want to see this Berlin, as it is. Yes, shaded by the point of view of these creatives; but a real point of view nonetheless. It was never only Tony’s hand opening that window to the far-flung theres of the world — hence all the “and co/and crew/and ZPZ” qualifying I’ve been doing throughout this essay — but it was indisputably his voice guiding us through it, telling us what to look at, what to marvel, what to notice, acknowledge, and pay respectful attention to.
I do still have a few more episodes to watch of Parts Unknown, and some…*shifts uncomfortably in masc*...feelings to feel. But I’m confident in saying, if you only watch one episode of TV to understand what Anthony Bourdain brought to the world, what the big deal was with this chef-turned-reluctant-Personality, what and who an entire industry (and many more beyond) still mourns the loss of: “Berlin” is the one.
“Echoes of lives lived, then lives lost. No other city has been repeatedly so powerful, then fallen so low. Few other cities have been so shaped by individual imaginations, either brilliantly creative, or unspeakably evil. Start again, start again. Look back at the past, never forget it. Like an Irish playwright said, ‘You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’”
What are your favorite episodes or moments from A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, or Parts Unknown (or I guess, The Layover)? I’m putting together a playlist of sorts, as I’m coming up on completing this chronological watch of all these shows. It’d be nice to know what other people notice — these aren’t necessarily shows you watch with a group, after all.